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history of encyclopaedias

…his prospectus (1675) for his Dictionnaire universel, found his privilege to publish cancelled by the French government at the request of the Académie Française, which accused him of plagiarizing its own dictionary. The Leipzig book trade, fearing that publication of Johann Heinrich Zedler’s huge Grosses vollständiges Universal-Lexikon (1732–50; “Great Complete…

…the issue of Antoine Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel des arts et sciences (1690) confirmed the true nature of public taste. Furetière not only compiled a fine encyclopaedic dictionary, but he emphasized the arts and the sciences, thus reflecting the rapidly growing public interest in modern culture, science, and technology. If confirmation…